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Thread: Last Movie Seen IV

  1. #51

    Got to see "Sleeping Beauty" on the big screen in 70 mm. Really stunning visuals -- gave me a whole new appreciation for how beautiful the styling and production design are. Andreas Deja spoke about the film and Alice Davis was there, too. Saw Tony Baxter in the lobby. There was a small exhibit of "Sleeping Beauty" memorabilia. Such a rare treat to see this film as it was originally meant to be seen.


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  3. #52
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    "The Dark Knight Rises" - Generally, I liked the film though I did think it was pretty slow in parts. I didn't like it nearly as much as I liked the first 2. There were some pretty spectacular moments in the film. That's about all I can say without giving anything away. I'm glad I didn't know much going in to see the film.

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  4. #53

    If you look at Hollywood's long history of trilogies it seems like ending the series on a no-reservations high note is nearly impossible. The first film may spark interest and build a fan base, the second film may improve upon the first in every aspect, but then, once the third film comes along it seems most trilogies can never quite stick the landing. In fact, the only two trilogies I can think of in which every film is as good or better than the one before are Toy Story and The Lord of the Rings.


    So what about The Dark Knight Rises? Does it join Toy Story and The Lord of the Rings or does it fall victim to the third movie curse and join the ranks of Return of the Jedi, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, and Spider-Man 3?


    The answer, unfortunately, is the latter. Now let me be clear, this film is not bad, in fact it's actually quite enjoyable and ends up being a rather satisfying conclusion to Nolan's Bat-films, but there are a lot of areas where it fails to recapture the magic of its predecessors, particularly the second film which many people rightly call the best super hero film ever made.


    The Dark Knight Rises feels like it's afraid of its own shadow. The legacy of the first two films looms so large over this one that it almost feels as if the film goes out of its way to be "bigger" and "more epic" in every way in order to live up to the incredibly unrealistic expectations people have for it, and its to the film's detriment. It kind of falls into the same trap as Iron Man 2, where there are just so many plates spinning all at the same time that it becomes overwhelming and slightly schizophrenic. At 165 minutes the film is very long, and in reality it probably could have been cut down and streamlined into a more efficient story if they had set aside the goal of being bigger than The Dark Knight. The plot of the movie is actually quite interesting; it has intriguing story beats, a compelling villain, a handful of excellent new heroes, and a great take on the final evolution of Batman's relationship to Gotham. The problem, however, is that the way the film is structured does a disservice to these interesting ideas. Too many characters are introduced early on that are essentially single-use plot devices, and by the time you actually start keeping track of who they are and what their motivations are they've essentially exhausted their usefulness to the plot and are discarded. Certain moments of plot revelation and character growth are handled in ways that are clunky and, in some cases, redundant, and although the basic story is easy enough to follow the details become so muddled and convoluted that it begins to distract from the narrative rather than add texture to it.


    The narrative simply is not elegant in the same way that the first two films were. The second film particularly had a lot of ins-and-outs with shifting motivations, betrayals, deceptions, character revelations, etc. but despite these complexities of the plot, the narrative was told in a very elegant way; one thing flowed into another logically, and everything served to enhance the narrative rather than distract from it. Inception is another great example of this; despite all the complexities of the plot, the narrative was told in a way that was intuitive, fun for the audience to follow, and, as I've said, elegant.


    Despite this, though, the movie still is a very enjoyable experience, and the things it does well it does *really* well. Anne Hathaway is fantastic as Selina Kyle (Catwoman, although none of the characters in the movie actually call her that) and she completely steals the show every time she's on screen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character, a Gotham City cop who grew up being inspired by the Batman is a great addition to the cast (and, in a lot of ways, is more the main character than Batman himself is this time around), and then you of course have the returning cast who are, as always, excellent. The action set pieces are exciting and the cinematography is great, particularly in the expanded IMAX format. As for arguably the most important thing this film had to do, concluding the story of Christopher Nolan's Batman, it does so in a way that is both fitting and satisfying. The film also, somewhat surprisingly, has more comic book fan service nods than I was expecting given the tone Nolan has gone for with this world. One of them in particular at the end of the film is a little bit too on the nose, but I can forgive it because the overall effect works.


    This feels like the kind of movie that my opinion on will evolve with subsequent viewings, and I expect to either warm up to it a bit and forgive it for some of its narrative missteps or perhaps sour to it and see the structural issues as more glaring. At this point, though, I'm going to call it good, but not great. It's still definitely worth seeing, and I would try to catch it while its still playing in IMAX because Nolan and Director of Photography Wally Pfister are currently unmatched when it comes to using that format to its fullest potential. It may not have stuck the landing, but it was an admirable, if flawed attempt that still manages to be entertaining and satisfying as an overall experience.


    B


  5. #54
    Registered User dban3's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by IllusionOfLife View Post
    The Dark Knight Rises feels like it's afraid of its own shadow. The legacy of the first two films looms so large over this one that it almost feels as if the film goes out of its way to be "bigger" and "more epic" in every way in order to live up to the incredibly unrealistic expectations people have for it, and its to the film's detriment. B
    Tragically, The Dark Knight Rises will have a legacy of a different kind I'm afraid. The Dark Knight series pushed the envelope in comic book violence. Life sadly copied art. Thoughts and prayers to the Colorado victims and their families of a senseless violent act of madness, people who wanted nothing more than to be entertained by an eagerly anticipated movie. Horrible, sad, tragic
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  6. #55
    Quote Originally Posted by dban3 View Post
    Tragically, The Dark Knight Rises will have a legacy of a different kind I'm afraid. The Dark Knight series pushed the envelope in comic book violence. Life sadly copied art.
    These people did not die because of a movie, they died because some sick person who gets thrills out of harming people has free access to weapons that are mean't for no other purpose but killing people. My heart truly aches for the families and loved ones of the people who were killed as well as the people who will now have that memory forever scarred into their minds, but the important thing to remember is that this is not about a movie. It's about a man with guns who killed people for fun.

    Devin Faraci of BadassDigest.com I think said it best:

    My condolences go out to the families of the movie lovers who were killed or injured, and in some way that includes every single one of you. These people were our kin, part of the larger family of movie lovers. Even when it comes to a film as mainstream and popular as The Dark Knight Rises, you have to be a real movie lover to get in line for a midnight show. These were our people, and every single one of us should feel the pain of their loss.

  7. #56
    Registered User dban3's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by IllusionOfLife View Post
    These people did not die because of a movie, they died because some sick person who gets thrills out of harming people has free access to weapons that are mean't for no other purpose but killing people. My heart truly aches for the families and loved ones of the people who were killed as well as the people who will now have that memory forever scarred into their minds, but the important thing to remember is that this is not about a movie. It's about a man with guns who killed people for fun.
    True.... the movie isn't responsible for the tragedy but when the killer introduces himself to authorities as the Joker, its somewhere in the conversation. I'll stand by my original comment. The following is from Mick LaSalle, film reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle - makes sense to me.

    The shooting in Colorado is a tragedy, and the murderer is the sole person responsible for it.

    But . . . Can we at least consider the possibility that our movies have become a feedback loop for national neurosis, celebrating it, glorifying it and nourishing it?

    It has long been clear to me that our current cinema in the United States has lost the Female Principle, that our cinema, especially our most popular cinema, is concerned only with external things, to the exclusion of inner values, and the external thing that its mainly concerned with is violence.

    I bent myself into contortions trying to say something nice about THE DARK KNIGHT RISES in my review today, knowing that this is not, generically, my kind of movie and thus I should make some kind of allowance for the bias of personal predilection. But there is something in this kind of cinema that strikes me as essentially anti-human a cinema where human interaction is a kind of unreal expression standing in for real emotion and where the only things that actually feel real are chaos and calamity.

    You might say that this is an expression of our world. But its not the only thing in our world, and, more to the point, it is not the only interesting thing in our world, or the most interesting thing. I read that one of the survivors thought, at first, that the violence was part of the movies promotion. What else is there to say?
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  8. #57
    Quote Originally Posted by dban3 View Post
    True.... the movie isn't responsible for the tragedy but when the killer introduces himself to authorities as the Joker, its somewhere in the conversation.
    Both murderers and the media have a long history of attributing killings to pop culture, but to me it's disingenuous. A killer is not killing because they saw it in a movie, they are killing because they are so deeply disturbed that they derive pleasure from ending another person's life. While a killer may use aspects of pop culture to dress up their crime, the crime itself remains the product of their own sick psyche, not that of a filmmaker, game designer, songwriter, or novelist.

    Christopher Nolan and Warner Bros. have no more responsibility in this than The Beatles had with the Charles Manson killings. To say that a film is responsible, at least partially, for this to me seems to take responsibility away from the killer and, in this case, dishonors the memory of those who died by attacking the very thing they died doing: going to enjoy a highly anticipated film with a large group of people who love movies.

  9. #58
    Quote Originally Posted by IllusionOfLife View Post
    Anne Hathaway is fantastic as Selina Kyle (Catwoman, although none of the characters in the movie actually call her that) and she completely steals the show every time she's on screen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character, a Gotham City cop who grew up being inspired by the Batman is a great addition to the cast (and, in a lot of ways, is more the main character than Batman himself is this time around), and then you of course have the returning cast who are, as always, excellent. The action set pieces are exciting and the cinematography is great, particularly in the expanded IMAX format. As for arguably the most important thing this film had to do, concluding the story of Christopher Nolan's Batman, it does so in a way that is both fitting and satisfying. The film also, somewhat surprisingly, has more comic book fan service nods than I was expecting given the tone Nolan has gone for with this world. One of them in particular at the end of the film is a little bit too on the nose, but I can forgive it because the overall effect works.
    I went into this film with no (borderline low) expectations because of the above mentioned Trilogy Enders (ughhhh Spiderman 3). Shame on me for doubting Nolan's filmmaker expertise because I thought this movie was phenomenal. I know that is a weighty word but I personally think this film is better than The Dark Knight. TDK and TDKR are dark films but in different ways. The motives and methods of the villains are completely different. Batman/Bruce Wayne is 8 years older. Gotham is a different city. I think the concepts in Inception and in TDK were more "elegant," if you will, than TDKR and therefore the story was crafted equally as elegant. In TDKR it was more ...frenetic, anarchic, uncertain, and I feel like the pacing of the narrative matched it perfectly. I don't go to movies to really analyze them afterwards so that's pretty much all I can come up with now but I really want to go see this again. I saw it in IMAX and it was quite impressive.

    One thing that really bothered me more than it should have was
     
    the One Wilshire building in the shot when BM was flying in THE BAT. I realize that Gotham is a conflation of multiple large cities purported as one but the One Wilshire building is pretty recognizable from several dozen movies and TV shows as an LA landmark.


    I really did not expect Anne Hathaway's performance to bowl me over the way that it has. It was smart. Very smart. I honestly had very low expectations for her as Selina Kyle but she was so good.

    There were some things that I really wanted to nitpick about (deviations from the comic books, among other things) but other than that I thought it was nearly flawless. I didn't even notice the run time and I sat in my seat until the very last credit rolled.

    One thing that really upset me, though, was that even after the announcement for everyone to put their phones away, the woman sitting next to me pulled her phone out TWICE!!!! Luckily for both of us the movie was VERY loud when I said to her, "Do you really need to do that right now?!"
    Last edited by jananafish; 07-20-2012 at 08:43 PM. Reason: additional comments

  10. #59
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    Found the first two hours extremely boring. It engaged pretty much every narrative cliche I can think of an much of it seemed structured more like the final episode of a long running TV show than a movie. The final act was put together better but all of the reveals had been obvious almost two hours earlier and it all hinged on something that is really pretty stupid.

    I don't know the comics at all so don't know what was flaw from them and can be completely blamed on Nolan. I don't necessarily expect to love everything Christopher Nolan does but I never expected him to bore me.


  11. #60
    Quote Originally Posted by IllusionOfLife View Post
    This feels like the kind of movie that my opinion on will evolve with subsequent viewings, and I expect to either warm up to it a bit and forgive it for some of its narrative missteps or perhaps sour to it and see the structural issues as more glaring. At this point, though, I'm going to call it good, but not great. It's still definitely worth seeing, and I would try to catch it while its still playing in IMAX because Nolan and Director of Photography Wally Pfister are currently unmatched when it comes to using that format to its fullest potential. It may not have stuck the landing, but it was an admirable, if flawed attempt that still manages to be entertaining and satisfying as an overall experience.


    B
    I enjoyed TDKR, but I did leave the theatre a bit confused. Confused not by specifically by any content of the film but by what I brought into the film with me, my expectations! The bane (no pun intented) of movie-goers viewing a sequel movie. Also, being a life-long Batman fan and fan of Nolan's fantastic take on my hero was another filter I watched the film through. Sleeping on it and finally reading some reviews and posts on chatboards helped me understand what I was really feeling about the movie. And my take now is that The Dark Knight Rises is so much larger and grander that any Batman story I've experienced in the comic books, and of course, there are many that I was genuinely blown away by. And I think my mind just never realized that could happen. I expected TDKR to have a more sophisticated story than it did, that The Dark Knight had, and it didn't. Instead, it was perhaps the least sophisticated Nolan film I've seen, and when I left the theatre, I was definitely disappointed by that. However, what TDKR attacked were our heroes in the story, men and women who knew the difference between good and evil, and in a real world of greys, they expected good to always triumph over evil. What they didn't realize was how naive they'd become. It killed me to see them confronted by the consequences of their ignorance. I also saw how closely Gotham mirrored the world we live in today. The tone and consequently the underlying message of the final act elevated my worship of my childhood to a level never reached before. He's just a man in a mask but Batman is my hero. The movie did a lot of things great, including retaining a lot of elements from the comic books that I was amazed he attempted to do and succeeded. But ending the way it did, I just thought Nolan ultimately succeeded, and now it's not just three individual films but one true grand epic story. And to your point, I think multiple viewings will help some audiences understand what they're watching and whether or not its nitpickiness or acceptance of the rules of Nolan's Gotham.

    Quote Originally Posted by Alex S. View Post
    Found the first two hours extremely boring. It engaged pretty much every narrative cliche I can think of an much of it seemed structured more like the final episode of a long running TV show than a movie. The final act was put together better but all of the reveals had been obvious almost two hours earlier and it all hinged on something that is really pretty stupid.

    I don't know the comics at all so don't know what was flaw from them and can be completely blamed on Nolan. I don't necessarily expect to love everything Christopher Nolan does but I never expected him to bore me.
    And then, there's Alex.

    Quote Originally Posted by IllusionOfLife View Post
    Devin Faraci of BadassDigest.com I think said it best:
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  12. #61

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  13. #62
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    Quote Originally Posted by Alex S. View Post
    I don't know the comics at all so don't know what was flaw from them and can be completely blamed on Nolan. I don't necessarily expect to love everything Christopher Nolan does but I never expected him to bore me.
    I can't say I was ever bored per se, but I was antsy at parts. I remember being engaged for the duration of the film for the first two films but not for this one.
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  14. #63

    I finally got around to watching 300 and I immediately regret it. What truly terrible film that was. For a movie that's less than two hours long it sure felt like an agonizing five hours. It was all empty spectacle and the spectacle itself wasn't even that good. It was both violent and hyper-sexualized, but neither element strengthened the narrative. The excessive lingering on the female anatomy felt misogynistic, and the violence was equally objectified and filmed as if it were beautiful which thematically guts it of any sense of brutality. It's completely joyless, completely shallow, and it's a perfect example of why a director needs a stronger thematic purpose for putting something in a film than "because it's cool." By my estimation Zack Snyder is a talentless hack who has no business being called a "visionary."


  15. #64

    I wanted to say that right after I posted that last night we went to watch it again. Yes, twice in one day. It was so good (not as nice-looking as IMAX so next time I watch it will have to be on IMAX). I am kind of obsessed with this film. I was walking around today talking like Hardy's Bane hahahahah

    @Gone2Disneyland - I agree with your whole assessment.



    Quote Originally Posted by IllusionOfLife View Post
    By my estimation Zack Snyder is a talentless hack who has no business being called a "visionary."
    Isn't he doing Man of Steel? I really did not like 300 either and don't get the cult-following surrounding it. It's just not a good movie. (IMO )

  16. #65
    Quote Originally Posted by jananafish View Post
    Isn't he doing Man of Steel? I really did not like 300 either and don't get the cult-following surrounding it. It's just not a good movie. (IMO )
    Yes he is. And that makes me very very worried. I really want to see a good Superman film, but I don't have a lot of faith in Snyder.

    I will say though, the best thing about the teaser for Man of Steel is that it's a Zack Snyder movie that doesn't look like a Zack Snyder movie.

  17. #66

    Whose Zack Snyder? I haven't heard of him before... Is he the director or will he be playing the "man of steel"?


  18. #67
    Quote Originally Posted by SnyderD View Post
    Whose Zack Snyder? I haven't heard of him before... Is he the director or will he be playing the "man of steel"?
    He's the director of (most notably) 300, Watchmen, and Sucker Punch. In my opinion the only one of those that has any redeemable qualities is Watchmen, but even that is by no means a "good" movie. He will be directing Man of Steel.

    As for who's playing Superman this time around, that's Henry Cavill.

  19. #68
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    Saw Beasts of the Southern Wild today. It is a mesmerizing film, but I can't yet decide if I really understand it. But an interesting thing happened when the movie ended. Nobody left. And that is almost no exaggeration. Almost every person in that theater (and it was 70% full) sat quietly through the entire credits.

    Like I said, it is a mesmerizing film.

    Glad I saw it, even if I'm still not sure what I'm taking away from it.

  20. #69
    Registered User houseofmouse's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by SnyderD View Post
    Whose Zack Snyder? I haven't heard of him before... Is he the director or will he be playing the "man of steel"?
    We saw the preview yesterday for Man of Steel. Looks pretty interesting actually. I don't know who Snyder is but it also said Nolan was involved as well. Well I loved the Batman trilogy so there is some hope.

    My MIL saw Beasts of the Southern Wild and hated it. I guess she didn't get it either.

    We saw Batman and yes living in Colorado I know a lot of people who won't go see it or to the movies right now. Well for me it is something we needed to do. I thought about those people almost the whole movie. If you let evil keep you from doing what you love, then it wins and well he doesn't' get that opportunity with my family.

    I thought the movie was well done. A few places I was like, "huh?" but overall it was a fun ending to the trilogy.
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  21. #70
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    There are too many movies which rely on a gimmick. 3D being the obvious one, but the stylized filming techniques as well. The Matrix may have had cool twisted freeze frame scenes, but it still had a good plot. Story is so much more important than style.

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  22. #71

    As for who's playing Superman this time around, that's Henry Cavill.[/QUOTE]

    That's really interesting, I thought he was great as the almost tortured soul in the Tudors. He was a great foil at times to Henry VIII.

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  23. #72

    I saw The Dark Knight Rises in pseudo-IMAX. I thought it was really good. Liked it a lot.


  24. #73
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    The Way Back - Eh
    Sleeping Beauty (2011 Australian movie completely unrelated to the fairy tale) - Eh


  25. #74
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    Finally saw Dark Knight last night, I loved it. G mentioned she would have liked a "walk in the park" about mid way through as it was intense the whole time. B's friend who went with us was a little disappointed but had compared it to Heath Ledger's Joker instead of letting it rest on its own merits.

  26. #75
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    Dark Knight Rises - The first ninety minutes could have been pared down to an hour and I really didn't like this version of Bain's character. On the bright side, it made the reveal at the end a surprise but on the downside the surprise didn't some from the script so much as it was a Usual Suspects moment where you think "Maybe this guy [Nolan] isn't such an idiot after all."

    But there were still so many dropped plot points (Batman's bionic leg that he doesn't use in either Bane fight, Bane's weird mind meld with Daggert, etc) and plot holes (the stock market scene that suddenly takes place at night, the cops that can't get out of one pile of cars in three months, etc.) that I was looking for the names Orci and Kurtzman in the credits.

    Plus, by the end of the film I think there was one kid in the background of one of the crowd scenes that didn't know that Wayne was Batman. That should make things interesting in the next film. (End of the $eries? HA HA HA HA HA HA!)


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